Range Thoughts

One of the quotes I used to see was attributed to a Japanese Admiral/general/official after their surrender ending WWII was “We never intended to invade America.  There would be a rifle behind every blade of grass: they hold public marksmanship contests.”  

Camp Perry National Rifle Match 
 It's open to the public, fill out a form and send your bucks in.

It’s often attributed to Yamamoto, but he was killed during the war in 1943.  It’s easy to just shrug and say, well it must have been another official with a similar name.

The truth is, it’s a made up, feel good quote used to promote CCW.

You may have heard the one when prior to WWII a German officer was the guest at a Swiss rifle marksmanship demonstration.  The men shot quite well over varying distances.  Following the demonstration the German was informed at all 10K members of the army could shoot that well.  The German officer asked, “What would you do if I showed up with 20K men?” and was told everyone in the army would fire twice and then go home.

Another interesting story to tell around the campfire, but most likely just a camp fire story.

However, Yahoo news (Feb 1924) reports that Finland plans on increasing the number of available shooting ranges from roughly 600-700 up to 1,000.  Why?  Take a look at the map and see who Finland’s neighbor is.  This is an effort to encourage citizens to take a greater interest in national defense.  Under the Finnish constitution, every male aged between 18 and 60 must complete national army service.  Currently required military service in Finland, depending on several factors, could be as long a year.  The government hopes that civilians will keep their weapons skills by providing access to more shooting ranges.

Perhaps the first two fictions are actually revealing a deeper truth.  That even in this day of drones and remote weapons, a prepared population is an asset to national freedom.

 Another, in my opinion, sadder truth

There are a couple ways of shooting this COF.  The least tactical and easiest and fastest is to stand in the open and shoot right to left.

I’ve been helping a friend set up a pistol match and one of his long-term goals is to run a stage in a shoot house where every match participant gets an unknown course of fire.  We visited the range and ran through a proposed set up just to see the faults and nudge it where it needed a nudge.

The range uses a squad system where the safety officers and support people travel with the squad and shoot the COF as well.  While it is easy to run an unseen COF, it almost always means someone will see the COF several times and will not find it much of a surprise.

The safety logistics can be difficult.  There is a tendency to want to go back to engage missed targets which can mean accidently crossing the safety officer.  It can also mean the shooter could accidently send a round out of the shoot house.  This particular house doesn’t have a bullet resistant front wall, or a sheltered position that could protect waiting shooters.  Knowing this the COF needs to be set up especially careful to steer shooters so that their actions always move them with the muzzle pointed down range.

The other goal is to enforce solid tactical behavior.  You’ve seen the vids.  A shooter jumps out from behind cover, exposed themselves to ‘armed’ targets and engages them usually right to left, because the gun recoils to the left and it’s slightly faster.

We moved barricades, shifted walls where possible, and shot it with our finger guns  (I used a stapler).  It has the makings of what could be good COF to practice tactics.  If you’ll take advantage of it.

Too many shooters are only interested in going fast and good scores.  It’s just a game to them.  Quite understandably, you can’t score tactics.  IDPA attempts that and has evolved from having two pages of rules to a thick book of rules.  This is driven by shooters interested solely in winning and becoming grand masters.  They push the boundaries looking for an unequal advantage.  After all, do we not say, “If you’re not cheating, you’re not trying to survive the fight.”

In an attempt to level the field IDPA and other shooting sports have developed more rules and, in some cases, simplified the COF to ensure that tactics aren’t necessary.

It’s kind of sad.